Download The Pharos Winter 2011 Edition - Alpha Omega Alpha

Reviews and reflections
as Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and
Eleanor Roosevelt. After being released
from prison, the young Halsman was
expelled from Austria permanently and
went to Paris, to try fulfill his father’s
dream for him of becoming an engineer
or doctor. After much struggle, Philippe
became a well-known Parisian photographer,
only to flee Paris as the Nazis invaded.
Penniless and stateless, Philippe
emigrated to the United States and rose
to become one of the country’s most
celebrated photographers of the 1950s
and 1960s. His name may be unfamiliar,
but his work we all know: the famous
headshot of Albert Einstein, Marilyn
Monroe in a white dress backed into a
corner, Salvador Dali with the curling
moustache, the Duke and Duchess of
Windsor jumping in the air. Halsman
had more Life magazine covers to his
credit than any photographer in history.
The story of The Jump Artist is
compelling as an arc from despair to
triumph, but it is not in the straightforward
telling of the story that this strong
debut novel succeeds. Rather, Ratner
writes the inner life of a human being
who has experienced a level of trauma
beyond imagination. His vivid descriptions
of prison, of helplessness, and of
the unearned, but agonizingly felt, guilt
of a victim and survivor are so richly
imagined that the reader feels that he
comes to know the interior Halsman.
We feel his adolescent struggles with
a father whom he loved and venerated
but was irritated by, his haunting sense
of loss, his shocked passivity in the face
of victimization, and his self-loathing,
so common in victims of trauma. As
he tries to make sense of his surreal
experience, he moves to art just as the
surrealist movement is gaining sway in
Europe, and his use of the camera begins
to move him into the outside world.
The camera captures the full range of
human emotion, from the surreal to
the playful to the beautiful. As Halsman
slowly allows love and art into his life,
he reclaims his life. Ratner’s use of language
and his strong artistic storytelling
draws the reader deep into Halsman’s
world and, as the novel builds, we root
for his success, hoping he will overcome
the tragedy of his youth. It is not just the
story that stays with you, it is Halsman
the human being.
As physicians we are always struggling
to understand the human condition.
This stunning novel does what all
truly fine novels should do. It illuminates
an understanding of the human
condition through its moving exploration
of trauma, suffering, and redemption.
Dr. Ponsky is the Oliver H. Payne Professor
and chairman of the Department of
Surgery at Case Western Reserve University
and the Surgeon-in-Chief of University
Hospital at Case Medical Center in Cleveland.
His address is:
University Hospitals, Case Medical
Center
Department of Surgery
11100 Euclid Avenue, LKS-5047
Cleveland, Ohio 44106
E-mail: jeffrey.ponsky@uhhospitals.org
Henry Kaplan and the Story of
Hodgkin’s Disease
Charlotte De Croes Jacobs
Stanford, California, Stanford University
Press, 2010
Reviewed by William M. Rogoway,
MD
The 1960s and early ’70s were times
of significant change in the approach
to cancer therapy in this country.
As the hazards and potential benefits of
radiation therapy became more widely
appreciated, it became a powerful treatment
tool. At the same time, drugs were
developed that not only led to tumor
shrinkage, but, in the case of childhood
leukemia, could eradicate disease.
Henry Kaplan was a towering figure in
this heady time of oncologic creativity.
Charlotte Jacobs traces Kaplan’s beginnings
in Chicago as the older son
of Russian immigrants, recounting the
early death of his father and his determined
mother’s struggles to keep the
family afloat financially and to further
her favorite child’s ambitious goals. This
story is interwoven with the history of
the gradual recognition of Hodgkin’s
disease as an entity, from Thomas
Hodgkin’s original cases to Dorothy
Reed’s defining pathologic description,
as well as the development of radiation
therapy from a scientific curiosity to a
therapeutic tool. By the time Dr. Kaplan
graduated from Rush Medical College
in 1941, a rudimentary understanding
of the disease with which he became so
identified existed and radiotherapy had
been used as treatment.
Dr. Jacobs outlines Henry Kaplan’s
rapid professional trajectory from
trainee to chairman of Radiology at
Stanford Medical School at age twentynine;
the remainder of the book is devoted
to his diverse and impressive
scientific and personal achievements.
The over-riding theme is that of a brilliant
physician driven to ever-more ambitious
goals.
Where does one begin? The Stanford
linear accelerator that permitted higher
energy and more targeted x-ray therapy,
the willingness to deliver higher doses
of radiation to wider fields in the quest
for Hodgkin’s disease cure, the identification
of the mouse leukemia virus and
the search for a human viral etiology for
malignancy, attempts to create antibodies
to human tumors. Kaplan gained
48 The Pharos/Winter 2011